


you might get away with it

by paperclipbitch



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Community: angst_bingo, F/M, Gen, Reverse Chronology, sad as all hell, way way longer than it was meant to be, yes I really do ship Cinna/Portia because I am queen of thankless pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He loves her, but not enough to save her.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	you might get away with it

**Author's Note:**

> [Title from _Electric Twist_ by A Fine Frenzy.] Spoilers for _Catching Fire_ and some stuff mentioned in _Mockingjay_. I haven’t written a fic backwards in ages, mostly because it’s kind of hard and I am not that good at it, but I thought it would work here. And tbh you can just scroll to the bottom and work upwards. Chronology should hopefully work, omg this was hard. YES I SHIP THIS, SHUT UP OKAY. I should just write an AU where they are sexy people at a design school and nothing bad happens to anybody the end. Anyway, this isn’t that fic, oddly enough. So it’s sad and shit. You’ve been warned.

“They’ll kill us for this,” Portia says quietly. Her eyes – diamond lashes – are fixed on the screens showing the audience filing into their seats, her mouth twisting at the corners.

“They’ll kill _me_ ,” Cinna tells her, wanting to reach for her hand, her cold fingers, but Katniss is taking all his warmth, his confidence these days. His little Mockingjay, and sometimes he likes to think he’ll see her fly, knows he never will.

Portia laughs at that; the sound isn’t cruel, though he knows it could be, is glad for the reprieve. He loves her, but not enough to save her, and she loves him too much to run but not enough to convince him to stop doing these things that will destroy him. They both live with this.

“You were never that naive,” she tells him. “They’ll kill us both, and our prep teams, our tailors. They’d take our families if there was anyone left to take.”

His girl, his woman; pragmatic and sad and with him to the bitter end.

The audience is excited, happy, and the weight of expectation breaks across Cinna’s shoulders. He should have warned Katniss about what will become of her wedding dress, but it’s best that she doesn’t know. They’ll have to go in, have to watch his moment of glory, one last swansong.

“But she’ll be beautiful.” Portia’s murmur is soft.

“Yes,” he agrees, because if you’re going to be damned for something then that something had better be perfect. Portia slips an arm through his, pulls him towards Caesar’s auditorium, steady hands and head held high to the last. “Yes, she will.”

 

 

Finnick’s spine is rigid, perfect posture, another situation tumbling through his hands. Cinna thinks that he’d prefer another turn in the arena, even a fatal one, to another night in some bruising dignitary’s bed, but there’s nowhere safe to ask that question now.

Portia’s head is angled towards Finnick, moonlight glinting off her braided hair, and her expression is cool and smooth like the opals at her throat. Both of them stoic, chewing over smalltalk, and Cinna’s heart clenches just a little.

“You should design something for me,” Johanna remarks, something lurid purple and too strong in one hand, “they always dress me up like a fucking idiot.”

“That’s because you just look like a fucking idiot,” Finnick replies, soft and sharp at the same time. 

Their friendship was never particularly stable, and the Quarter Quell has done nothing to help them. They’re all weighted down with things they can’t say, won’t say, will never say. Time ticking down in fragments and only the Girl On Fire gets to live. His Girl On Fire, and yet the sacrifices never get less heavy, less painful.

Coin holds all of Katniss’ Mockingjay outfit designs now, safe and perfect and waiting. Cinna hopes it’s enough. It has to be enough.

His fingers feel like feathers and flames, sleepless nights over a wedding dress that isn’t a wedding dress, his final contribution. He knows it will be his final contribution; it can be nothing else.

“It’s late,” Portia says, and he hears _when did you last rest_ in her voice. 

He doesn’t know. Maybe he hasn’t truly rested for years.

Portia leaves Finnick at the balcony railings, crossing to Cinna in clicking heels, and lays a hand on his cheek. Her eyes are sad, but her mouth is firm, stubborn.

“You should let her mother you,” Finnick says, less of a taunt than he’d probably like.

Annie is in Four. The only person here who can look after Finnick is Johanna, and she’s too dangerous to ever be sentimental. She’ll keep them both alive long enough though, and she’ll get what needs to be done done. That’s what she does.

“Come on,” Portia says, hand dropping, and Cinna lets her lead him back inside. His sombre, steady woman he once thought he knew.

He told Katniss once that he had no desire to hurt anyone but himself, and it was true. Then. Now, with the mixture of despair and bravery and sheer stubbornness on each tribute’s face, called back to a place they’ve told themselves they were safe from, it _burns_.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Portia whispers in his ear as she leaves him outside his quarters, lips against his ear, breathing a little unsteady. She laughs, sudden and broken. “Well. Aside from the stupid things you’re _already_ doing.”

He kisses her cheek and she nods, pulling away, and he watches her walk down the hall until she turns the corner and she’s gone.

 

 

“I forget sometimes that they’re children.” Portia has curled her legs up, huddled into his couch. “We’ve pinned so much on them, but they’re children.”

Haymitch is angry, Effie distraught. Cinna isn’t sure he expected anything different of their District Twelve tributes, who’ve never gone for subtlety when breaking something could be considered _so_ much more effective.

Now, Katniss and Peeta have training scores of twelve painted on each of their backs, and even with a tentative plan in place, well, they’d have done better to keep their damn heads down. Shot some arrows, painted some leaves across their faces, left well enough alone. But they’ve never done that, of course, and there’s no reason to assume why they would start now, with so little left, so much on the line.

Cinna sits down next to Portia, puts an arm around her shoulders, squeezes.

“I’m not Katniss,” she tells him, “that won’t comfort me.”

Her lips curve anyway, and she tips her head to rest against him. He knows how fond she’s grown of Peeta, who is smart and sweet and less brittle than Katniss, and he should probably be dead by now but Katniss will never let him die, and Cinna hopes that one day she’ll realise what that means. 

“I trust them,” he says. There’s an arrogance in youth, and he thinks that the resistance could use a little of that fierce, _stupid_ bravery. He still feels it in sparks sometimes, and Portia _looks_ at him but she doesn’t try to temper it anymore.

“Of course you do,” Portia sighs. She doesn’t move, so he doesn’t either, and eventually she adds: “nothing we’ve done is going to improve this situation, you know.”

The Capitol is a powder keg right now anyway, and with Katniss and Peeta throwing in firecrackers, not to mention the vicious unpredictability of the other tributes, well, Cinna probably shouldn’t just hand them the matches.

It’s too late now, though, and even if he could he doesn’t think he’d turn back.

 

 

“No.” Portia looks from him to the feathered Mockingjay dress, and her eyes fill with angry tears. “No. No. No. You cannot do this to her. Not to her, not to us.”

“To me,” he corrects.

“To _us_ ,” she snaps. “We are a team, do you really think that I can play ignorant? That Katniss can play ignorant?”

Cinna swallows, but the Mockingjay dress is perfect and just what the revolution needs, the perfect symbol, sharp as the fire. _They aren’t going to let her out of that arena alive_ , Heavensbee murmured when he last came to “check on their progress”. _Coin is scrabbling to make plans before it’s too late_. The revolution comes first, after all.

“If you go now,” he says quietly, “if you quit our team now-”

Portia slaps him, sending him reeling back more from the shock than from the feel of her hand connecting with his cheek. 

“You fucking _idiot_ ,” she hisses, voice thick, and he grabs her arms, pulls her into a hug that she fights for a moment before collapsing into him, mouth shivering against his throat. “And if you don’t know by now that I’ll follow you to whatever prison cell you’re dragging me to, then you really _are_ an idiot.”

Cinna wants to apologise, and can’t. He holds her close instead, waits for her breathing to steady, keeps his eyes closed.

“So,” she says eventually, calm, the golden waves painted around her eyes undisturbed. “How are we going to make sure the feathers don’t catch light with the wedding dress?”

Portia has been a part of him for so long it’s sometimes hard to remember that she’s actually separate, that there are consequences for her that he can’t shield her from by taking them on himself, and it makes him feel itchy, lost in his own skin. 

“Portia,” he begins, and she shakes her head, braids bouncing, eyes on the dress with nothing but cool contemplation, detached, a stylist’s vision.

Fuck, but he loves her.

 

 

Katniss’ hair is soft under his fingers as he weaves it into the familiar braids, her gaze on him in the mirror although he can tell she’s thinking about other things. In any case, he won’t cry like her prep team did, because he hasn’t cried for years. There’s nothing left to lose, after all.

Tonight, he and Portia have created something magnificent, something perfect for their tributes, who have burned away everything to be left simply with what’s left over, hard and blazing and impenetrable.

Unofficially, Portia’s been referring to these parade outfits as their _Fuck The Audience_ costumes, but only after three a.m., only after alcohol, and only when she’s sure they won’t be overheard. The last days of self-preservation, before it will all stop mattering anyway.

 

It’s easier to watch strangers die than it is to watch familiar people die, and Cinna can’t quite judge the mood of the Capitol; excitement for a Quarter Quell of the games, especially in those too young to remember the first one – Cinna’s heard stories, of course, and shreds from a drunken Haymitch that made no sense and too much sense at the same time – but there’s a sense of tragedy there, of resentment. These are the people with Finnick Odair commemorative posters, after all, and there are still enough people who haven’t had the chance to woo him. Buy him. Whatever they’re calling it these days.

He doesn’t go to meet the train because he isn’t ready to see Katniss yet, not with the resistance scrambling to put together a plan where they can still win, where they won’t lose their precious Mockingjay, and he doesn’t sleep at night now as he sketches and resketches armour for Katniss that may yet prove superfluous. 

“I don’t think revolutionaries are supposed to be making fashion statements,” Portia remarks softly, perched on the arm of his couch in the apartment he returns to only to sleep and eat, when he remembers. As official stylists, they’ll be moving tomorrow, into quarters near their tributes. It’s an honour, he’s been told, the same as he was told last year. 

This apartment has never been home, but he’ll miss it anyway; there’s something here that isn’t safety, isn’t reassurance, but is his own, is something he likes to think they can’t tear away.

“You’re clearly going about this wrong,” he teases her, waving a page of half-finished clothing at her. “The prettier they are, the more the Capitol will like them.”

It isn’t true, but it is at the same time, and he doesn’t have to explain it because Portia already knows.

“You should dress all of Thirteen,” she tells him easily, managing a smile. “I think they could use a little tailoring.”

He laughs. “Only if you help me.”

“Of course,” she replies, false easiness in her voice.

On the television, tributes pour off trains, trying to look brave. Finnick, Johanna, Chaff, Katniss and Peeta. If Cinna doesn’t pay close attention to the broadcast, they all blur into one; someone else he can’t save, not with all the needles and thread in Panem.

 

 

“It needs more blue,” Portia decides, hair wound up behind her head and held in place with the styluses she uses for her tablet, barefoot on their workshop floor. She points to one of the screens they have on the wall; hours of footage of fires. On a bench are hundreds of burned-down candles, a mass of wax and charred wicks. “At the edges, there needs to be more blue.”

She’s right, and Cinna nods, making notes as he circles the mannequin with the beginnings of Katniss’ parade outfit beginning to take shape. Peeta’s is beside it, flickering softly, although the flames still look too cheap, too artificial.

Cinna doesn’t know what it would be like to work without Portia; without someone who knows what needs changing without either of them saying a word. 

Portia rubs her eyes, reaches to pin the collar of Katniss’ costume up slightly, changing the shape. “Do you ever wish we’d picked another motif for them?” she asks, a wicked smirk curling her mouth. “Something that makes me feel less like I’m going blind, for example?”

Her smirk cracks at the edges, and the trick to doing this is not to ever think about _why_ , not to ever think about _who_ they’re making these for.

“Next time, we’ll do flowing water,” he tells her, pressing play on another recording of a fire, flames licking at the sky, angry and all-consuming.

 

 

They watch the broadcast in Portia’s apartment, side by side on the couch, ignoring the Quarter Quell announcement parties taking place on the streets.

Cinna’s mind is already preparing itself for the clothes he’ll have to make; they gave him Twelve again, back before things became quite so messy, and then of course they couldn’t demand it back because that would imply that there was a _problem_. He thinks about Katniss and maybe Peeta returning as mentors, wonders if they can hold their nerve, wonders if he can help them.

When Snow reads out the announcement that this year’s tributes will be reaped from the existing victors, he thinks his heart stops in his chest.

“It’s fixed,” Portia murmurs beside him, “it’s got to be,” and she bursts into tears.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen Portia cry, and he can’t make himself move to touch her, to comfort her, and even with the broadcast continuing on, Cinna can’t hear a word Snow is saying, can barely hear Portia sobbing angrily beside him, and he thinks _I should phone Katniss_ and then _I should start designing for her again_ and he still remains frozen.

 

 

Cinna never got into this to design wedding dresses, but then these wedding dresses are part of the increasingly thin line keeping Katniss Everdeen alive, so he gives each one the attention it deserves, orders what feels like acres of white and cream and pastel pink silk from Eight, orders lace and satin and velvet, starts designing shoes and veils and tiaras and headpieces, goes to his favourite jeweller to commission strings of flawless pearls.

A competition of a different kind, and maybe no one will die this time; the Capitol seem excited that they’ll be able to vote for the gown that Katniss will wear. Maybe it’s only fitting that a wedding being dictated by the television and the government have every last detail picked out by the public; none of it’s ever been in Katniss and Peeta’s hands, after all.

Sometimes, he wonders what would have happened if they’d been left in District Twelve; if Peeta would still be watching Katniss from a distance, never brave enough to say anything.

Portia comes by his workshop to look over his designs, to try on veils when he asks her to, to finger necklines and hemlines and frown at intricate beading. She’ll have to design Peter’s tuxedo, but this wedding is all about Katniss, of course; all Peeta will need to do is compliment her.

It’s different, seeing Portia here surrounded by the remnants of a wedding, diamonds dripping between her fingers, a potential tiara for Katniss perched slightly askew on her hair as she smiles at him. He wonders, just for a moment, what her wedding dress would have looked like. Will look like, maybe.

Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this.

It’s been too long, and they’re not those people anymore. Maybe they were never those people in the first place.

“Poor Katniss,” Portia sighs, dropping diamonds into a heap on top of a pile of lace that might become a veil. “Poor Peeta.”

Cinna nods, but in that moment it isn’t their District Twelve victors that he’s pitying.

 

 

All anybody wants to talk about are the clothes Katniss and Peeta have worn for their victory tour, which is actually a relief; while they’re discussing ballgowns and suits, they’re not discussing the way Panem is falling into pieces and Cinna is at least partially responsible.

Cinna and Portia are honoured guests at all kinds of parties; the kind of parties Cinna has never particularly wanted to go to, where he stands out because he hasn’t dyed his skin or set himself on fire – a trend he’s amused to see sweeping the Capitol, partially because _they have no idea what they’re really wearing_ , and partially because most designers aren’t as good as he and Portia are, and everyone has to keep a fire extinguisher handy – but where everyone wants to talk to him. He grins and bears it and takes the compliments because, well, he’s certainly earned them.

“Careful, or they’ll turn you into a show pony too,” Finnick remarks, halfway down his third glass of something acid green that’s making his eyelids heavy, his body language loose. Cinna knows him too well to play this game, and in any case he knows what most people at this party don’t: namely, he knows about Annie Cresta.

“I’m not nearly interesting enough for that,” Cinna replies, looking to where Portia is talking to Johanna. Johanna’s smile looks more like she’s baring her teeth in warning, though she likes Portia well enough. 

“You’ll be commissioned to dress every person in this room,” Finnick tells him. “And then maybe undress them too.”

He puckers his lips, bats his long eyelashes.

Cinna smiles, but lets it pass without comment. “I’ve got a wedding dress to design first.”

Something flickers in Finnick’s expression. “Ah yes, our lovestruck little backwoods murderers,” he muses. “Because no one in the Capitol can believe that poor people can feel love.”

“Don’t be cruel, Finnick.” Portia’s appeared from nowhere, the lights of the party flickering off her dress. She looks beautiful, and her exhaustion shows only in her eyes, if you know where to search for it.

“All I’ve got left, darling,” Finnick responds, a cheap imitation of flirting that sounds like it stings. “And don’t forget for a minute that all that Everdeen and Mellark have going for them is that they’re a novelty, dancing fucking ponies like the rest of us.”

No one’s forgotten that, but it sounds worse spilling from Finnick’s lips.

“I was going to ask you to dance to save me from everyone else,” Portia tells him, “but I think I’ll ask Cinna instead.”

Cinna takes her hand, leads her onto the dancefloor. He doesn’t look back at Finnick.

“Don’t be angry,” Portia tells him quietly. 

“I’m not angry,” he replies, sliding his arms around her waist.

“You are,” she says, “but don’t be.”

He sighs, swallows down the myriad of emotions threatening to drown him, and manages: “how’s your evening been?”

Portia laughs. “I’ve been stuck talking to the Head Torturer for the last half an hour. He seems to think that telling me in great detail how they create an Avox is going to get him a date of some description.”

Cinna grimaces. “Romantic,” he says.

“Well, exactly,” she agrees, and steps back so that he can twirl her.

 

 

Sometimes, no matter how much you want to, you can’t help. The victory tour makes Cinna feel particularly helpless, particularly angry; Katniss and Peeta are driving each other mad with nightmares and tension and bitter revelations, facing the crowds of districts threatening to revolt, who won’t be consoled by false smiles and clasped hands, facing families of people that they killed in order to try and survive.

Eight is the worst, because it should be home and it isn’t anymore. He knows hardly any of the faces in the crowd, though it hasn’t been all that long since he left, and, well, he no longer has a family here. The locals look at him like he’s a stranger, one of the exotic creatures from the Capitol, and he wonders if he’s really changed so much. 

Cinna always knew he could never go back, but the truth is still bitter on his tongue.

Portia comes to his quarters as the train speeds on through the night, hair loose around her shoulders, face clean from make-up, in a simple nightgown that brushes just below her knees.

“I know,” she says quietly.

Of course she knows. He still doesn’t know what district she’s from – she’s always kept that to herself – but whichever one it was they’ll have passed through it at some point.

He wants to voice his doubt aloud, his loneliness and confusion and what he quietly just _wishes_ , but he’s kept himself strong this far, and Katniss needs him to be confident. He can’t give into this.

They share a bed for the first time in years that night, Portia curled into herself with the sheets tangled around her legs, Cinna pressed almost close enough to touch; not quite, but nearly.

 

 

Eleven is the first district they stop at, and the whole thing is an unmitigated disaster.

While Effie frets and complains at dignitaries, and Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta disappear to no-doubt regroup, now that people are being executed – presumably not part of anybody’s plan – Cinna finds Portia’s hand and they pretend to need the bathroom. Peacekeepers watch them, but no one attempts to stop them, and the first empty room they find, Cinna pulls Portia inside.

There’s nothing they can say that won’t be overheard, nothing it’s safe to say, and they’ll let Effie believe in cars backfiring and firecrackers but Cinna knows gunshots when he hears them and suddenly this tour looks like it’s going to be very, very long. There’s only so many dresses and hairstyles he can drape Katniss in to try and contain a situation rapidly spiralling before anyone is ready to correctly exacerbate it.

He hasn’t spoken to Coin in a while, it hasn’t been safe, but he knows that she doesn’t want this yet.

He pulls Portia close, buries his face in the stylish but sombre dress they picked out for her; something with class but designed to make her blend into the background, another part of the entourage.

She clenches a hand in the back of his collar, the only sign that she’s as scared as he is, and Cinna gives himself a second to murmur _fuck fuck fuck fuck_ into her shoulder.

 

 

Past stylists all seem to want to talk to Cinna and Portia about how they should dress their tributes for their victory tour; Cinna nods and smiles and pretends to take their advice, and then goes back to what he’s always known he’ll have to use: his gut instinct, Haymitch’s murmured telephoned instructions, and what he knows Katniss will willingly wear.

If she wants to continue getting away with the berries stunt, then Cinna will need to design a whole lot of pretty, virginal dresses that make her look too innocent to be a girl considering pulling down the government. She’s in love, she was delirious, and tributes have gone mad before, they should be glad that she’s done it in such a pretty, photogenic way.

Finnick is in the Capitol at the moment, and Cinna finds him hanging around the workshop with Portia one afternoon. She’s surrounded by shirts for Peeta, hair wound through a golden tiara.

“Your first victory tour,” Finnick remarks, half congratulatory, half sneering. It comes across sour. “Word of advice: drink everything they offer you.”

“You were fourteen, your victory tour,” Cinna reminds him.

“So?” Finnick smirks, sharp, wolfish. “If you win the Games, no one will ever say ‘no’ to you. Ever.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that on to Katniss and Peeta,” Cinna replies evenly.

Finnick always wants a reaction, but he also wants somewhere to hide, so Cinna doesn’t bother rising to his bait.

“If you’re going to be here for a while, you can help me with this,” Portia tells Finnick, tossing him a handful of black velvet that will eventually be a jacket for Peeta. “Sewing isn’t all that different from weaving a fishing net.”

Finnick rolls his eyes, but it isn’t the first time they’ve given him chores while he’s here, and he doesn’t bother protesting. Cinna watches him for a moment, and then turns his attention to a wall covered in designs for Katniss.

 

 

“Cinna-” Haymitch begins; damnably sober, sharp-faced, and determined.

“I know,” Cinna cuts him off. “It’s in hand. Really.”

There are murmurs everywhere, if you know where to listen, and Katniss and Peeta aren’t out of danger yet. In fact, they’re in for a whole lot more danger than they were in the arena, and Cinna knows that everything he dresses Katniss in from now on needs to protect her; armour made of frills and silk and glitter. 

Haymitch studies his expression for a moment, then claps a hand against his arm, thanks going unsaid but writ large on his face anyway.

 

 

The world stops when Katniss pours the berries into her palm. Haymitch sucks in a breath between his teeth, reaches for the nearest drink, and downs it.

Portia’s hand closes around Cinna’s wrist, nails digging into his skin. Her eyes are wide, her lips pressed together in a tight line. 

Cinna wants not to be watching this in public, wants to not be at this party of mentors and stylists and sponsors, aware that people keep looking at their corner because, well, District Twelve are the only people left alive. For now.

The District Six stylists are clutching one another, cooing about how romantic it is, and Cinna distantly notes one of the sponsors crying, pressing a lilac handkerchief to her eyes. The mentors are all silent, largely expressionless, although Johanna looks like she’s swallowing down a laugh, and Finnick’s head is tipped slightly to one side, while he refuses to show that he’s impressed.

“Oh, stupid girl, what have you done,” Haymitch mumbles, reaching for another drink. Cinna dimly thinks he’d like one himself, because what Katniss is doing is foolish and dangerous and perfect and he is so _proud_ of her that it stings.

When Seneca Crane’s voice booms through the arena, stopping Katniss and Peeta from what was rapidly becoming a suicide pact, the room erupts into applause. Some of it is frenzied and genuine, some of it is bemused and hesitant, and the applause from the mentors, all of them past victors, is slow and measured and deliberate.

Portia’s fingers peel from his wrist, though she doesn’t start clapping, and Haymitch wipes a hand across his face, mind clearly already putting together contingency plans, pretty lies, frantic tap-dancing to hide the truth, the extent of the damage.

All Cinna can feel, bone deep and burning, is relief.

 

 

“How many Games have we watched together?” Portia asks. It’s three a.m., and they’re watching Cato and Clove sitting around a fire, sharpening cruel knives. 

Cinna’s designed sixteen different victory dresses for Katniss, because he isn’t giving up hope, no matter what anyone says to him. She’s smart, and she’s sharp, and she’ll keep herself and Peeta alive.

“I don’t know,” Cinna replies, because he doesn’t want to count how many children they’ve seen massacred. “Too many.”

She smiles, humourless, hugging her knees. “True.”

As people behind the scenes, they’ve seen more than what was broadcast to the public; he saw what Katniss did for Rue’s body, saw her singing to the little girl in her final moments, and there’s unrest peeling through the building, bitter and anxious, and it makes him scared because they don’t ever forget or forgive these things.

They take everything from you for a lot less: Cinna learned that the hard way, after all.

“Do you really think they’ll let them have two victors this year?” Portia asks after a while, because it’s late, because they’re alone, and because sooner or later someone has to ask that question.

Cinna doesn’t know; he doubts it, because the games have only ever been cruel, never merciful, and star-crossed lovers can only get away with things for so long. He’s learned that one too.

He stays silent, and in the end Portia just nods and sighs, doesn’t push for an answer or ask for anything else.

 

 

It’s strange, watching the Games like this, being part of it, knowing the tributes, knowing the stylists and mentors and prep teams. When the dying children on the screen are more than just sacrifices, when you’ve met them, walked past them, spoken to them.

Sometimes, he feels guilty wanting Katniss to succeed at the expense of these other tributes, at the expense of Peeta. But Katniss... there is something about her, something that people have latched onto, something that wasn’t just created by his clothing designs, and he thinks that they need her to survive.

He doesn’t mention this to Portia, of course; Peeta’s hers, and she looks exhausted enough these days already.

Maybe this is what the Games are about after all.

 

 

Once Katniss has been sent to the arena, the room seems too small, too silent, and Cinna’s hands are shaking.

He always had to send her away. Everything was building towards this, he knows, and he kept himself strong for Katniss’ sake, and now all he wants to do is run, drag her back, fold her away somewhere safe.

There isn’t much time until the Games begin, and he should find a screen so he can see how she fares. If she’ll become yet another victim of the cornucopia, or if she’ll listen to advice. He doesn’t want to watch, he can’t _not_ watch, this terrified, strong girl he’s already turned into an icon.

He finds Portia in the elevator, cheeks wet with tears, a shaky half-smile shoved into place.

“How’s Peeta?” he asks.

She shakes her head, and he can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s alright; he doesn’t want to talk about Katniss, about the look in her eyes before she left.

He reaches for her hand, and she knots their fingers together, tight.

They find Haymitch and Effie in the crowded room upstairs, everyone packed in to watch the beginning of the Games. Tributes looking drawn and fearful in the sunlight, the little ones who won’t stand a chance. Watching this never gets any easier, and Portia hasn’t let go of his hand yet. He doesn’t think he’d let her if she tried.

His mouth moves silently, counting down the numbers, unable to look at anyone else, at Effie’s anxious fluttering, at Haymitch’s drawn and sober face. There’s nothing any of them can do now, except wait, and watch, and hope.

 

 

Portia is drinking dark purple wine, a thick handknitted shawl around her shoulders, pulled tight. She looks tired, bitter, make-up smudging down her cheeks.

Cinna doesn’t bother asking if she intends to sleep tonight; he knows that he won’t, and he’s grateful for the company.

“She’s maimed Peeta,” Portia mumbles into her glass. “I mean, the medics did what they could, but his hands are a mess.”

“He took a risk,” Cinna replies, devil’s advocate, perhaps. He’ll give credit where it’s due, though: “he was perfect.”

Portia nods, sighing, taking another mouthful of wine. “He was,” she agrees. “He came up with something neither of us could.”

Cinna thinks of Katniss, unable to smile for the cameras, to take part in the necessary circus of noise and grinning and pretty, pretty lies, and the dress he made in the hope it would save her. 

It’s been a long night.

“They weren’t quite what we were expecting, were they?” he asks, sitting down beside her. Stating the obvious, true, but it’s worth saying. After all, these ones are unpredictable; shooting arrows at Gamemakers, stealing the spotlight, falling in love with each other. If the Gamemakers had known in advance that District Twelve were going to turn out to be so _interesting_ , they would probably have given them a more famous stylist; not that Cinna has anything to complain about.

Portia laughs, curls into his side. “You can say that again,” she replies, handing him the wine.

Cinna kisses her temple, and thinks about Katniss’ anger, Peeta’s bleeding hands, Haymitch’s bitter exhaustion, his Girl On Fire spinning in her dress, and a confession on camera that changed all of the odds. Peeta is brave and stupid and so very clever, and Cinna admires him. 

After all, he’s never been able to admit to being in love with anyone.

“I suppose we sit back and wait for their next bad idea,” he muses, and Portia laughs beside him, like she’s thinking about meaning it.

 

 

“So I hear you got the crazy murdery ones,” Finnick says cheerfully, topping up Haymitch’s glass.

Johanna grins with all of her teeth. Cinna can’t even imagine what it would be like, having her as a mentor; but then he’s currently watching Haymitch’s best attempts at keeping Katniss and Peeta alive, and really, none of the mentors are anything other than completely insane. They won their Games for a reason.

Haymitch puts his head in his hands. “At least the other ones were scared and docile,” he mutters. “They didn’t go around _shooting shit at Seneca Crane_.”

“I think it’s awesome,” Johanna shrugs, resting her chin on her hands. “I’d be okay with throwing something at Crane.” She tips her head at Finnick. “Hey, didn’t you once-”

“Finish that sentence,” Finnick says, something sharp underlying his tone. “Really. Finish it.”

Johanna rolls her eyes at the unspecified threat, but she stays quiet.

“Fucking eleven,” she says instead, turning to Haymitch. “What do they do to you guys out in Bumfuck, anyway?”

Haymitch rolls his eyes, downs his glass. “You’re just bitter because your kids pulled sixes.”

Johanna’s mouth tightens, and she looks away.

“How are you holding up?” Finnick asks Cinna. “Your first Games and all.”

It’s worse than he expected, and better, and he can’t believe that Katniss might be dead in a matter of days. He _refuses_ to believe that, and... well, that might become difficult in the near future.

He shrugs in response. There’s no way to phrase it, after all.

 

 

They have a special place on the balcony, and it’s different to last year, when they were at the back of the stands, the tributes no larger than glittering ants in their chariots. Now, they’re there for everyone to judge, the cameras panning in on their faces, the new stylists.

Even expecting it, Cinna’s breath catches in his chest when he sees Katniss and Peeta, both of them burning bright and perfect, hands entwined and grins on both of their faces that look almost real.

Portia sighs and sways into him, and he wraps an arm around her waist, smiling into her hair. 

This is their moment, what they’ve been waiting years for, and despite everything, despite it _all_ , he’s proud of them.

 

 

They’ve watched the reaping over and over again; Katniss Everdeen screaming out for her sister, hastily volunteering while the sobbing little girl is carried away into the crowd. Peeta Mellark looking sick as he walks up to the stage, fingers curled into his palms so that no one will see him cry. Villagers watching them with thin, desperate faces, in tattered best clothes, peacekeepers fingering their weapons.

“Are you nervous?” Portia asks, as they test the synthetic flames one more time. Cinna’s left arm is still healing from last week, when they hadn’t quite gotten the formula right yet, but it’s definitely perfect now, crackling over the outfits they’ve mocked together from the measurements sent to them. “To meet them, I mean.”

Cinna is nervous, but excited too. Something about the set of Katniss’ jaw, her pale determination and refusal to put on a show for anybody... he likes her already, and he hopes that she’ll at least tolerate him. He lives in the Capitol and Eight was reasonably wealthy before he left it – he never had to sign up for tesserae, and food was decent and enough, if not plentiful – and he doesn’t know how the girl from Twelve, where they all seem to be quietly starving to death, will react to him.

For a sharp moment, he thinks about what _he_ would have done in Katniss’ situation, but it doesn’t matter anymore, after all, and he pushes the thoughts away.

“Are you?” he asks, turning the question around as they douse the flames of the clothes, reach for the headdresses to make sure that they’ll work too.

“A little,” Portia admits, smile curled at the edges. “I’ll be fine once we’ve met them, but this wait... how do you treat someone who’s had everything taken from them and been given a few weeks to live?”

“Not like a victim, I suppose,” Cinna replies.

A moment later, and the headdresses burst into perfect flames, filling their workshop with light. 

 

 

Seneca Crane oversees the appointment of the stylists personally, eyes unnaturally blue, mouth tight.

“This is your first year,” he tells Cinna and Portia, expression clearly telling them that mistakes will be met with a firing squad, suspicious of their comparatively simple clothes while the other stylists glitter and shimmer, too bright to look directly at. “So we wanted to assign you to-”

“We’d like to request District Twelve, actually,” Cinna cuts in, because he’s thought long and hard about this. He feels Portia tense a little beside him, but her face doesn’t give anything away.

There’s laughter in the room, and Crane’s mouth twists a little. “Very well, then,” he says. “We were going to offer you something more prestigious, for the record, but take Twelve.”

Later, Portia looks up from her sketchbook to say: “you wanted to dress them up as miners?”

Cinna smiles. “Something like that,” he responds, and reaches for a box of matches.

 

 

Portia’s latest boyfriend has left her after complaining that she spends too much time working, which frankly means that he’s angry about how much time Portia spends with Cinna. She hasn’t explicitly said this, but Cinna can read it in her eyes anyway.

He doesn’t apologise, because Portia is all he really has anymore.

She’s lying on his couch, hair tumbling over the pillows, and he brushes a hand against her wrist on the way to the kitchen. “Tea?”

“Thank you,” she sighs. “I feel like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot, Portia,” he replies, and that’s when the letter arrives. Letters are safer, easier not to hack, and there’s something enjoyably old-fashioned about them. Cinna picks up the thick cream envelope, and hears Portia gasp behind him, bouncing off the couch, misery forgotten.

“Is that...” she begins tentatively, and Cinna carefully tears open the letter, unfolding the paper inside.

_**You have been selected as stylists for the seventy-fourth Hunger Games.** _

He has to read the sentence several times to force it to make sense.

Portia walks over, plucks the letter from his hands, and gasps. 

They shouldn’t celebrate this, not really, not when they think about what it really means – dressing children up for slaughter – but it’s an _in_ , a step, and something they’ve been quietly working towards for years without ever discussing it.

She throws herself into his arms, delighted and shaking at once, and he grins against her cheek, letting himself have this, just for one moment.

 

 

His manager thinks that he needs to _sell_ himself better, pursing green-painted lips that match her curling green wig, ringlets that don’t suit her spilling over her shoulders.

“If you don’t want to wear the clothes you design, then why would anyone else want to?” Calliope demands of him, hands on hips.

Cinna wants to fix about two-thirds of her outfit for her, but that’s the quickest route to getting fired and it isn’t as though he isn’t heading there already.

“You do reasonable work,” she adds, waving a hand at the section of the store allotted to him, the mannequins draped in feathers – this season, he likes _birds_ – and glitter, “but you need to work on your profile. You dress like you’re going to a poor district funeral.”

Even now, that makes him grit his teeth, bitter. He says nothing aloud, of course.

Purely to annoy Calliope, he puts in a few phonecalls until he finds out that Finnick is in the Capitol; having a victor request you to style them should be prestigious enough, after all, and the look on her face when Finnick strolls in is enough to make Cinna bite down a smile.

He’s a better person than this, but the Capitol makes you pay all kinds of games, and at least this one won’t end in anyone getting hurt.

“What’ve you got for me, then?” Finnick asks, draped naked in a fitting room, glass of champagne dripping from his fingers. “You could probably just glue feathers to my cock, I hear that kind of thing pleases clients.”

His voice is too sour for Cinna to smile back; instead he just shakes his head slightly and reaches for a rail of shirts.

 

 

“We’re rivals,” Portia reminds him on an eyeroll, but she reaches for the sheets of his designs anyway.

Cinna is sitting cross-legged on her bed, portfolio in his lap; Portia’s is lying on the covers beside him ready for his approval in a moment. Working separately is harder than he anticipated; years at the Academy have made him co-dependant, turning his head to ask Portia’s opinion with his mouth full of pins only to find that she isn’t there, of course she isn’t there.

He has co-workers, of course, but they see themselves more as rivals, especially now the Gamemakers are looking for new stylists for the Games, accepting applications and dropping into studios and stores to examine work.

Of course, Cinna won’t beg for anyone’s approval, won’t lay himself out like that.

“By the way,” Portia says after a moment, sweeping a pencil line along the hem of a gown, “I submitted our names to the Hunger Games as potential stylists.”

Cinna chokes and stares at her. 

“You wouldn’t say that you wanted this,” Portia tells him, “because you never say what you want. But you’re in the running now.”

She smiles at him without a hint of remorse, and Cinna can’t untangle the complicated mixture of emotions inside him, the want for recognition, the desire to make a difference, and his sheer disgust at the Games themselves, the idea of dressing children up to die.

Portia dips her head back over Cinna’s sketches. “You’re welcome,” she murmurs, in response to the things he can never say.

 

 

“To employment,” Portia says in the crowded bar, clinking a glass against Cinna’s. She has emeralds woven through her hair, her lips studded with tiny green stones. 

“Employment,” he echoes, and drinks deeply.

Without the safety-blanket of the Academy the world feels different; better, worse, colder, sharp with possibility. Right now, of course, they’re on the bottom rung of everything, but they won’t always be.

Cinna’s designs have gotten him a place in a store, the possibility of selling dresses and suits to bored citizens exploring the narrower, less popular streets of the shopping district. Portia is apprenticed to Malvolio Kingsblade, the second most prestigious designer in Panem; he’s dressed tributes and victors for forty years now. He designs are pedestrian and often verging on the ridiculous, but if Portia doesn’t point this out, well, she’ll do very well.

Johanna is on the dancefloor, golden chains wrapped around her wrists, a trapped look in her black-painted eyes. They look like bruises in her face, and Cinna looks away from her and the dignitary who has bought her for the night. She’s waiting on the revolution to become more than hypothetical, and the alcohol turns bitter in his mouth.

Portia nudges him under the table with one foot wrapped in a pointed peridot-coloured silk sandal. “Not tonight,” she orders. “Tonight is _ours_. Tonight we’re not revolutionaries.”

Her words lost under the too-loud, too repetitive music. Well, they’re always revolutionaries, but he doesn’t need to tell Portia that, and he knows what she means.

“Ours,” he echoes, covering her hand with his on the table.

 

 

The last time Cinna kisses Portia is the night they graduate. They didn’t much fancy staying with their classmates to celebrate, so Finnick got them invitations to a party and made them promise they’d dress _up_.

Portia is in frothing blue and white that shivers like waves on a beach, while Cinna dresses all in gold to match his eyeliner and rims his eyes with black instead. 

Finnick is some kind of guest of honour, which possibly means he’ll be sleeping with half the people at this party, but the food is good and the drinks are plentiful and Portia’s shoes shimmer under the light of the chandelier as Cinna guides her around the dancefloor, graduation and panic and pride bright in her eyes.

No one in the room knows who they are, delightfully anonymous, though everyone’s eyes are on their clothes. 

“We should find some excuse to loudly drop our own names,” Portia muses on a lilting smile. 

“I feel cheap,” Cinna responds, because he doesn’t design his clothes for _this_. He’s designing them for a purpose, even if he doesn’t yet know what that purpose is. It isn’t for presenting himself at parties he wasn’t invited to, in any case.

“You are very bad at being fun,” Portia tells him firmly, and Cinna doesn’t even think about it when he bends his head and slides their mouths together, there in the glittering light, surrounded by strangers.

“That was cheating,” Portia tells him when they finally pull apart. Her voice is soft, sad, but her smile is real enough; he hasn’t even damaged her make-up.

Sometimes, Cinna misses her, misses her even when he’s holding her in his arms like this.

“You never specified parameters,” he replies, just to make her laugh.

 

 

The final of the seventy-second Hunger Games falls on a Thursday afternoon. It’s been a swift games; brutal, bloody and harsh, with the career tributes ripping apart the tributes the wild animals in the sweating artificial rainforest haven’t already eaten.

Cinna is finishing his final assessment piece, sitting on the floor of the studio with Portia as a reluctant model, making huffing noises occasionally when he won’t let her sit down. The Games are playing on the wall, projected onto the blank space, but neither of them are paying much attention; he’s more focused on the intricate beadwork around the hem, bruise purple and shining. 

Portia hisses between her teeth and Cinna hears the commentators groan in something like sympathy, schadenfreude. A canon sounds, and he threads another bead onto his needle. There are machines to do this, of course, but he wants to get this _exactly_ right.

Rain begins onscreen, and Portia shifts a little, hands clenching in the full skirts of the gown for a moment.

“Just both tributes from One, the girl from Two, the boy from Nine and that girl from Ten who hasn’t stopped running,” she tells Cinna.

That means it was Eight that just died, and he takes a silent breath for another member of his old district, gone.

“Will you ever tell me what your district is?” he asks her.

He hears the wet ripping of flesh from the Games, refuses to look up as his hands tremble.

“I don’t have a district anymore,” she replies quietly, a more direct reply than he’s ever gotten before. He gets the feeling he’ll never get anything more out of her; maybe this is enough.

“Does that make this hurt less?” he asks, another canon sounding, a child screaming like a raging animal.

Portia sighs. “What do you think?”

 

 

While students drunkenly roam the halls, partaking in a dozen impromptu Hunger Games launch parties, taking bets on the ten children left alive after the cornucopia’s bloodbath, Cinna goes to find Portia.

She’s hiding in the closets full of stock, of course, lying splayed across piles of silks and velvets and brocades, ribbons and lace trickling between her fingers.

“It turns out the arena gets very cold at night,” Cinna tells her, closing the door behind him. 

“And everything’s too damp to light a fire?” Portia guesses.

“And there are _things_ in the darkness,” Cinna adds.

“I’d expect nothing less.” Portia’s still looking at the fabric threaded between her fingers.

Cinna comes to lie down beside her, plucking a string of lace from her hands. 

“Is that from Eight?” she asks after a long moment.

He wraps the ribbon around his wrists, his fingers, his palms. “Handmade,” he confirms at last.

Most of the material is made in factories nowadays, where accidents happen – last year burns suddenly in his mouth like bile, memories he refuses to hold anymore, accidents _happen_ , yes, when they are _engineered_ – but the finest things are still crafted using skills centuries old. Cinna won’t think about most of his childhood, but he remembers the old ladies making lace in the afternoon, thick bent fingers worn thin.

Portia reaches to take his hand, her own fingers still tangled with silk ribbons in skeins of red, gold, purple, silver, white. Cinna lets her, even as they navigate what is left of their intimacy, because the little girl from Eight went down choking on her own blood this morning, dark eyes glassy in the sunlight.

His sister was spared the reaping, at least, he thinks dully.

 

 

The suit Portia is drawing is the ripe green of a new apple, the inner layers coloured white like the vulnerable flesh when you dig in a knife and wrench free a piece. 

They’re in one of the Capitol’s municipal parks; a laughable excuse for greenery, but if you want to see a real, honest tree then there’s nowhere else to go. Cinna draws shoes that look like bark, hiding secrets in their crevices. Portia is barefoot, toenails painted diamond white.

“Was this ever a good idea?” she asks, hooking a finger in his sunglasses to drag them down his nose, something sad in her eyes.

_Yes_ , he wants to say. _No_ , he thinks. His pen hovers over the page, undecided, and Portia’s eyes skitter over his expression, reading too much into it, reading too little.

It’s been a long, long year. Cinna tries to figure out the last time he slept, truly slept, when he dreamed of anything other than blood and fire and empty spaces.

“If you leave me now-” he begins, trying for joking. She’s his only real friend in the Capitol; the only person he can stand to talk to who hasn’t slaughtered their way to victory in a Hunger Games, and that probably says too much about him.

“I’ll never leave you.” Portia pushes his sunglasses back into place for him, turns back to the suit she’s colouring in. She sounds so matter-of-fact, and Cinna’s heard that promise before.

This changes everything and nothing, and after a moment he rearranges his world view a little and lies back into the grass, tipping his face away from the sunshine.

 

 

“You know _Finnick Odair_?” Shimmer demands.

Cinna internally rolls his eyes at his roommate, but outwardly nods; he likes Shimmer, vapid and unimaginative as he is, and he could be living with someone far worse, after all.

“He knows Johanna Mason too,” Portia puts in from where she’s sitting at the desk, a dress she’s re-hemming frothing out of her lap. Her voice sounds innocent enough, but he can hear the laughter she’s barely keeping out of the sound. Johanna isn’t someone you boast about knowing, after all, and Shimmer goes a little pale under the lilac swirls of his facial tattoos.

He seems to decide to ignore what she’s said for the sake of the conversation; he shakes his head slightly and says: “you could end up dressing victors when you leave here, _imagine_.”

Cinna isn’t here for glory, but he doesn’t think that Shimmer would understand being told that, so he just laughs.

“I will never dress victors,” he replies easily, lying back on his bed, while sequins and lace tumble out of Portia’s lap.

 

 

“You,” Finnick says, a slur in his voice, “are going to get a _reputation_.”

Portia looks at Cinna, a smile toying around her painted lips. “Which one of us are you talking about?” she asks.

Finnick waves a hand, narrowly avoiding covering them in the sticky orange alcohol he’s drinking. “Maybe I’m talking about both of you.”

“You let him get drunk?” Johanna demands, dropping into the seat beside Finnick, all knees and elbows and spiky hair, poured into a silver dress she clearly didn’t choose herself. 

“You can’t contain me, darling,” Finnick informs her, baring his teeth in a snarling grin.

Cinna doesn’t understand the relationship between them, the friendship if you can call it that. But there’s a lot of things about being a champion of the Hunger Games that he doesn’t understand, could never understand, and maybe _that’s_ why he and Portia are the only Academy students who sneak out and go to these parties with the battered broken victors of the Games.

“I’m not getting into this with you,” Johanna says swiftly, reaching for what remains of Finnick’s drink and draining it herself. “I’m only sitting here to make Cashmere and Gloss leave me the fuck alone.”

Cinna puts an absent arm around Portia’s shoulders; she leans automatically into his touch. They all have more in common than it’s comfortable to admit, but there’s still a brittle divide between the two of them and the two victors sitting opposite, eyes too bright from whatever it is you can buy to make the world bearable.

And they all know what the cost of believing in more is, what the Capitol will take from you if you don’t do as you’re told.

Portia shifts a little against him, as though she can hear his thoughts, though the music is loud and the lights are bright and the place is packed with people tossing around the phrase _slumming it_. Titillating themselves on some kind of imagined danger, as though the victors are wild animals who might at any moment _bite_.

Finnick is leaning into Johanna, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he whispers hard and fast into her ear, and Cinna reflects that, well, in a way they really are.

 

 

Portia laughs at him when he leans over her, tugging the sheet she’s using to cover herself into a more flattering position, draping across her breasts and baring her thigh.

“Are you using our sex life to work on your homework project?” she asks mildly, eyes glittering in the dark.

“Maybe,” he replies, dropping a kiss to her cheek and lying down beside her again, the two of them wrapped in soft pale hints of light from the wall of Portia’s room, which has artificial stars twinkling across it.

“Good to know,” she says dryly, but he can see her smile, and he teasingly pushes her shoulder.

He loves these moments of quiet that they steal, that still exist despite everything else. There are days when Portia feels like the only good thing left in his life, Portia and the material that he can fashion into something new and perfect and beautiful, better than reality. Reality is hard and bitter and it’s easy to understand why so many people in the Capitol turn blind eyes to the world, focused on parties and appearances. Sometimes, Cinna wishes he could.

“I wish...” Portia sighs and trails off, fingers skimming through the sheets and ruining his work.

“I know,” he says, because he does, because he doesn’t want to make her have to say it.

“No,” she corrects him, “you don’t. But it’s okay.”

She curls onto her side and he follows suit, wrapping himself around her the way he always does, and concentrates on Portia because it’s easier than any of the other things he could think about.

 

 

Foil, a man in the year above them, had invitations to a party that most of the students backed away from when they saw them, but Cinna was feeling just self-destructive enough to accept. Students have historically been rebels, but no longer: the Academy teaches them how to toe the line and pretend that that was what they always wanted as much as it teaches them how a string of pearls can alter an outfit for the better. 

It’s too late now, though; the damage is done, and there’s nothing that they can take from him anymore.

“You don’t have to come,” he tells Portia, while she laces her shoes up her calves. “I don’t want-”

“You’re not the only one with nothing left to lose,” she reminds him sharply, before she softens it with a smile. “Besides, this is a new dress.”

“It looks lovely,” he tells her, because it does.

Later, an arm drops around his shoulders. “So, I heard a story about a young and promising designer who got his family killed by asking a lot of questions.”

Cinna’s throat hurts, and he immediately wants to attack whoever is speaking. Except that when he turns his head, he _recognises_ him.

“You’re Finnick Odair,” he says blankly.

“Points for observation for the boy wonder,” Finnick responds, rolling his eyes.

“You’re the same age as me,” Cinna can’t help reminding Finnick, looking around for Portia, who seems to have disappeared into the crowd.

Finnick laughs; a sleek, practiced one that he buries in Cinna’s shoulder. Across the room, Cinna can see an annoyed-looking older man watching the two of them, and remembers that badly-kept secret about victors and what you can hire them to do for you.

“Should you be talking to me?” he asks.

“Probably not,” Finnick replies. “But I wanted to meet you. And to tell you that I’m sorry. I sound like I don’t mean it, but I do.”

There’s sadness in those gold-flecked eyes, now that Cinna can see them up close in real life. He remembers the blood-covered boy in the arena, remembers watching it at home, his sister hiding her face in his mother’s shoulder.

No. No, he doesn’t remember that.

“Thank you,” he replies, a little startled by this entire situation.

Finnick flickers him a swift smile that’s nearly real, and says: “you’d better go rescue your girlfriend from Johanna. She’s a little... well, she’s a lot too much.”

“Johanna Mason?” Cinna asks. This night has taken a turn for the incredibly surreal.

“You know any other Johannas capable of getting into these parties?” Finnick asks. “Because it isn’t her sparkling personality that gets her invited, believe me.”

He pulls away from Cinna, turning back halfway across the room to tip him a cocky little salute, and Cinna thinks: _oh. Okay then_.

He thinks: _well then, none of this is over_.

 

 

Mostly, Cinna pours himself into his work over the next few months. He draws, and he sketches, and he sews, and he convinces his classmates to act as models for him as he experiments and refines and perfects. He sets one of the classrooms on fire trying to simulate flames across the bodice of a new gown and half expects a bitterly fresh new punishment as a response to what looks like an act of defiance, but the cameras discovered it was an accident and he gets away without even a stern talking to.

He eats when Portia brings him food and sleeps when she appears to drag him to bed, and talks when she presses him to. The weight of knowledge and of guilt and of blame resting across his back is so heavy it’s a wonder he can stand, some days, and it tends to be then that he finds himself with his face buried in Portia’s shoulder, finding breathing impossible.

Sometimes, Cinna wonders what it would take to get her to leave him before she’s taken, but she seems to be able to tell whenever he thinks that because that’s when she kisses him, hard and loud enough to drown out the voices in his head, the shuddering in his limbs. 

“You should call your family,” he says one night, three a.m. and drunk on penance, “call them and tell them that you love them.”

Portia strokes his hair, his back, his cheek. “My family are gone,” she tells him. He frowns, but she shakes her head. “One day that’s all you’ll say too. _My family are gone_. There’s no sense in reopening old wounds.”

Cinna nods, forcing himself to swallow the tears that want to spill, because he doesn’t want to cry anymore, won’t give the Capitol that satisfaction. He wonders what Portia did that was so bad she needed teaching a lesson. He knows that he’ll never ask.

 

 

He works, feverishly, blindly, for three days straight, locked in the studio while people bang on the door and shout, words that all blur into one after a while.

When he completes the dress, it’s perfect; simply but devastatingly cut, the shimmering, shifting fabric the exact colour of his sister’s eyes.

 

 

They _know_ if you don’t watch the Games, if the viewing screen in your room isn’t tuned in, so the news arrives when Cinna and Portia are watching the final of the seventy-first Hunger Games; a skinny frightened girl from Eleven armed with sharpened sticks attempting to escape a boy from Two twice the size of her armed with a dripping machete.

Cinna isn’t sure who he’s expecting when he hears the knock at the door, but he certainly isn’t expecting Professor Apple, principal of the Academy and someone he’s previously only seen during beginning and end of semester meetings.

The look on Apple’s face makes his stomach clench, and Portia mutes the television somewhere behind him.

“If you accompany me to my office-” he begins.

Cinna shakes his head, panic uncurling through his limbs. “I’d rather know now, thank you, sir.”

He closes the door to his room behind him, leaving them alone in the quiet narrow corridor, painted an ugly shade of green that doesn’t help anything.

Apple’s face is creased with regret, his lips pressed too-tight together. After a moment, he says: “there was an accident at one of the factories in District Eight.”

Accident, Cinna thinks, but he doesn’t believe it. He can see that Professor Apple wants to believe it, and that is perhaps worse.

“I see,” he says softly, voice cracking. “And my family?”

Apple fails here, ducking his head, forcing a rough swallow. He can’t meet Cinna’s gaze as he says: “your grandmother and mother were killed instantly. Your sister is in the hospital, though she isn’t- she isn’t expected to survive the night.”

Cinna nods, unable to speak, unable to move. “Thank you for telling me,” he says.

“If you would like-” Apple begins uncomfortably.

“No,” Cinna interrupts. “No.”

He fumbles behind him, almost falls backwards into his room. Portia is sitting silently, watching him, and he doesn’t know what to say, how to explain.

“We should finish, um, finish watching that,” he says, gesturing at the screen. He turns the sound back on the television just in time to hear the final scream of the little girl from Eleven as the machete is buried in her chest.

He stumbles to his bathroom, falling to his knees as bile rises in his throat.

The scream echoes from the television again, while Portia comes to sit on the floor beside him. She doesn’t say a word.

 

 

The essay is a triumph, if ‘triumph’ can be measured by how many badly-disguised Peacekeepers begin to follow him around, guns ostentatious.

“You should be more careful,” Portia tells him in bed one night, curls rippling across the pillow. “Really, Cinna, you should have just written about how much you like velvet or something equally non-problematic.”

“It’s an _essay_ ,” he tells her, curling arms around her waist. “It’ll be fine. Really.”

Only something he submitted to cover a semester’s work ends up being leaked from the Academy, and once it hits the public information systems, well, there’s not a lot Cinna can do to get it back.

They were supposed to be talking about how the vibrancy of the Capitol can be reflected in the clothes of its citizens, but Cinna found himself writing about how the other districts find themselves scrambling to acquire the most basic amenities of clothing, and surely it would be better to share the flavour around with everyone, the better to have a united Panem.

It is slowly becoming apparent that he might have said a little too much. 

Portia keeps _watching_ him as though she’s expecting something, though she denies it whenever she asks. 

“You should be more careful,” she admits when pressed. “You can never tell who you’ll get hurt.”

Cinna doesn’t really believe her, of course.

 

 

The last afternoon of his life that makes any sense at all, Cinna spends with Portia. She’s been his girlfriend for a year, and sometimes he looks at her and wonders how he got so lucky, how stumbling over a girl in his first week at the Academy has lead to this, to someone who seems to understand him better than he understands himself.

They picnic on the roof of the Academy, sitting on a wide knitted blanket that Portia made herself for a project last year, sharing slices of crisp fresh apple.

“Promise me,” Portia murmurs into a kiss, Cinna’s fingers threaded through her hair.

“Anything,” he replies, because he isn’t that scared young man from District Eight who stumbled from a train with raw blistered fingers and a bag full of needles, and Portia’s the only person who knew him then and knows him know and hasn’t blamed him for any of it.

She smiles; half real, half sad. “Promise me life will always feel this good,” she says, waving a hand at the clear blue sky, the soft purple blanket, the apples and wine and the golden afternoon.

Portia isn’t stupid or naive and they both know that he can’t, but he smiles at her anyway and murmurs: “I promise.”

It’s one of those things that lovers say; he doesn’t know then just how much it will come back to haunt him.


End file.
